HearthKeeping and Serving the Church

She grasps the broom and smiles at the grime—

mental,

emotional,

physical—

in her space, gathered in the corner, collecting on the surfaces, and coating her people.

It’s a bloody battle she is facing.

A war with all that would come at her dwelling,

both the structure, the soul, and herself,

and so as a Queen,

she gears for battle,

though humble, though invisible, she will fight for her home.

She will sweep it clean, body and soul,

so life, comfort, safety, and healing

can thrive, grow, flourish.

Many homemaking books root our motivation in how homemaking redeems the world, that our work matters because in each floor we sweep, we’re working alongside God to redeem the world. This doesn’t motivate me at all. I believe a careful exegesis of the scripture clearly teaches both directly and by metaphor (looking at you Flood and Ecclesiastes) that God isn’t redeeming the nuts and bolts of this earth. He is saving us out of the world. At some point in time He will return to destroy this world with fire. He’s not redeeming the world. He’s redeeming us. While I think raising children is world-changing work for sure, my motivation to do laundry and sweep and cook isn’t to save the world. The world is damned already.

What my everyday work is doing is serving my church. (All the homemaking books miss the church. If they have the church, it is almost as if the church is there to serve your needs, or it’s tacked on somewhere in a short chapter or footnote.) God uses the Ordinary Means of Grace to ordinarily save people. My work at home supports that work. We may not be missionaries off in the dark corners of the world, but our Monday-Saturday work supports our churches where the Word is faithfully preached each week and sinners are saved. The work in our homes serves souls. Our work is soul work. We are caregivers. Laundry, cooking, cleaning is soul work and supports the work of the church! This is motivation right there.

We live in a wider church culture filled with ministries. Everything is about finding your ministry and putting that at the forefront of your life. Yet in the specific application for the life of the church member found in both Ephesians and Titus we don’t actually see any formal ministry commands. We’re called to serve our church and we should be purposed and intentional about watching for those opportunities. We should look for ways to support the means of grace. Not by forming committees, or carving out our territories, abandoning home and family for the more visible work at church, nor do we need specific gender-oriented things.  I mean come on, we’re in the new covenant. We’re no longer outside while the men worship inside. Why do we constantly seek to remove ourselves back outside?

Our churches should be a bastion, a lighthouse to the world, of respecting men and male leadership. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to think men are toxic, stupid, or incapable of speaking to us where we’re at. We go down that path and we’re going to throw out Peter, Paul, and eventually Christ. We women of the church should be the front line in supporting our husbands, raising strong sons, supporting our deacons and elders. We should show respect to them when no one else will.

If we don’t have a ministry how do we HearthKeepers serve our church?

By keeping our homes!

Our first line of defense, our first fight, our service to one another is tending our hearth and homes.

As the wife of a pastor and with the church being our “family business”, it’s a little easier for me to see this. Anything I can take off my husband gives him more time to study, sermon prep, and counsel. The better I keep my home, the more ready it is for surprise visits and needs. Every meal I cook and word of comfort and encouragement I speak is for the direct good of the church via my husband. (Ladies, this is terrifying. Pray, pray, pray for your pastors’ wives and your deacons’ wives. We hold much hurt and stress deep in our hearts and must have great wisdom when talking with our husbands and helping them.)

But what about the woman whose husband holds no office in the church? HearthKeepers, we matter to the church. We matter!

Let’s look at it from the back end. What would happen in the church if we all got lazy and quit?

If you allow your hearth to grow cold, the church will be filled with troubled homes. Contention between spouses will leak into our pews. The Sunday service will not be a welcoming place of worship, but bitter, cold, and distant. At the silliest extreme, the church will be filled with stinking people who aren’t fed or bathed, and don’t have clean clothes to wear. We aren’t to take pride in what we wear, but if we’re being diligent we, our husbands, and anyone else in the home should arrive on Sunday in clean-kept clothes. If we stop, we’ll have disheveled churches which won’t be a haven for visitors. How can we welcome new members into our church family, if our church family is a mess? Just imagine the burden you would put upon your pastors if you quit tending your hearth? Since both are soul work, you would be putting on him marriage problems, more health issues, and disrespectful, untrained youth. Your pastors can’t do everything. They are only men. So do your work to help them just like the pastor’s wife does.

If we aren’t tending our hearths, we will impact the church with franticness and bitterness. If we all leave the hearth, we will not be engaged with our homes and we’ll be tempted to be busybodies. Socializing, being with friends, and fellowship are all very important. I have to remind myself of this all the time because socializing comes with a high price tag for me. For others, it’s tempting to put off the work in the home to go gossip over a cup of coffee. We must not slip into this temptation. We must tend our hearths.

If you don’t tend your hearth, or you do it lazily, you will be a burden on your husband and your family. Someone will have to pick up the slack. So if your husband is working to provide and then comes home and does the homemaking, what are you doing? You’re not helping him. That impacts the church. Instead of him being able to serve the church, he’s just busy keeping chaos in control.

Now I’m not talking about the formative years of childrearing, sickness, homeschooling, or a husband helping his wife. I’m talking about a lazy woman who can’t see beyond the end of her own nose and the impact her laziness has not only on her own home but the church at large. IF we want our churches to be warm and welcoming, we need to play our part and tend our hearths.

A well-tended hearth produces calm. That calm infuses our homes and sifts out into Sunday morning and the church is filled with calm, contented members and attenders. Can you see the influence?

Titus is all about us within our church membership. And we’re to be working from home, loving our husbands and children, older women teaching younger women. It doesn’t glorify God if you leave your hearth for some bigger ministry or career, leaving the hearth dark, dank, and cold. Everyone can subconsciously sense that dark, dank cold and it filters into our church with anxious families, poor Sunday attendance, and loud, bitter women clamoring for the spotlight while cat-fighting the women around her.

We affect the church. HearthKeepers, our work spills directly into our pews. It has indirect and intangible effects and direct and tangible effects. It has small ripples, like caretaking not happening, and big ripples, like the name of the Lord being maligned.

Do you think that if you leave your hearth, stop helping your husband, stop training your children, stop tending the elderly, and refuse to join in the work of training the younger women, that God is somehow glorified? All the worldly and parachurch accolades aren’t going to make up for that. Nor will they warm our pews. We live in a time when little, ordinary, mundane work is considered beneath us. We need to be seeing and saving the world all while selling our organic art on Etsy or what are we even doing with our lives? Remember, this comes from the lie that there is no life after death. Without life after death, it would be a waste to live an ordinary life. But, we believe in life after death, so the toiling we do here isn’t pointless.

It is the quiet, gentle work at home that infuses our families and churches. It is the invisible faithfulness that makes church beautiful.

Us cooking nourishing meals, cleaning our homes, washing sheets, encouraging rest, planting flowers, tending our shelters, clothing, and food is tending the church. Who do you think makes up the church? We are taking care of fellow church members and loving our neighbors. Some of us are tending one church member, some of us several, and some of us are tending saints and witnessing to unbelievers every moment of every day. We don’t need something bigger or more visible. We don’t need a ministry. We need to serve. We need to remember that Christ didn’t talk about us saving the world, but giving a cup of water to the least of these. Have you ever thought that that might be your husband?

Tend your hearth! Don’t look for bigger, better, more significant, praise-from-the-world work. Don’t think that your work has no bearing on the church. Every day, when you get up, fix food, make beds, plan menus, decorate, you are serving the church. Your work may not seem to be visibly serving, but we’re not called to live by sight but by faith.

We tend our homes for Christ’s sake. “Lord, when did we see you hungry?” This isn’t feeding the world, this is feeding your husband, your fellow church member. Lovingly making a nesting place for him, and by extension your children and the stranger, is loving and serving Christ.

Let this help you see beyond the dishes, laundry, cleaning. Let this help you even see beyond your husband so that while we tend the temporary and thorny things below the sun, our eyes are on our King above the sun.

Dear maids, you have an amazing opportunity to plug tangibly into your church. Watch your habits. If and when the Lord gives you a man to help, your time will become his time. If the Lord blesses you with children, you will be even busier. I’m not saying don’t tend to yourself, or even not to enjoy the independence you have, but work on building good habits by cutting back on your ‘me time’ and serving your church. Cook a meal for a family and you will make a woman cry with delight. Offer to babysit, for free even. Take an artistic ability and turn it into a service. Look for older people who could use a friend. It is easy to fritter away your time on yourself when you’re single. Find out who has health issues and offer to help them with projects. Ask a deacon who could use an extra hand. Make yourself available to your church. I promise you, it will be a blessing to you and to the rest of us and will help you develop good habits for home and hearth.

Matrons, it is difficult to be invisibly faithful. We so badly want to be seen. It’s hard to release the world from our tight grasp. Remember, our Lord sees us. He sees each dish we wash, each toilet we scrub, and each floor we sweep, again. He has put us in His church, made us part of the body. The invisible parts of the body are no less important than the visible parts and each provides a service. We are fellow heirs, fellow priests, and fellow sons. We are now part of the brothers! And we have homes to tend. Tending them is tending our churches. Yes, sometimes there will be more visible ways we get to serve, but they should never take precedent over our homes or husbands. This is our first line of defense in the great war. We can’t leave our posts. Hold the line and speak truth to yourself. Homemaking isn’t a waste and it isn’t insignificant in the life of the church.

Crones, we need you desperately to stay in the fight. Please don’t cop out now that you’re older. You have so much you can bring to the table. Without you, many of us will be in the dark, fighting to figure this all out instead of being cheered on. A show I like has the line “It’s better to be in the dark with a friend than to be in the light alone.” Don’t leave us in this world alone. It is so very hard to be invisibly faithful. You can help with that by removing some of the invisibility because you’ve been doing this job a long time. Help us endure. Help us learn. Help us speak truth to ourselves. This will require that you go to work on yourself. The world has lies for you, too. Don’t listen to them. Don’t make this your ‘me’ season. Don’t stop just because you’ve been going at it for decades.

The work of serving the church is mundane, ordinary work. God uses means, the means of grace, and the ordinary workings of providence. Tending our hearths supports the means of grace and takes part in the ordinary workings of providence. We dare not go hunting for glamourous big things while refusing to nest ourselves in the ordinary tending of the souls around us. You don’t need to save the world, you need to tend your hearth.

P.S. If we see our church as our forever families and we see how strongly our homemaking can impact the church, then we should realize how important our choice of church is. The church we join is important and we should make sure we take this selection seriously. Yes, our husbands are the spiritual leaders, but we’re not passive. We are the biggest influence in our children’s lives, and our homemaking directly influences the church and her ability to be hospitable. The church you join yourself to is important. Make sure the church honors your responsibilities to your husband and your home by not drawing you away with ‘ministries’ and activities. Does it encourage you and your family to sit under the preaching of the word or does it encourage you to leave your home for something more important? Does it encourage you to leave the joint body so you can be better understood as a woman, while taking your children so that they can be talked to on their level? We like to think that a church filled to the brim with ministries and activities is exciting, but it might just be pulling you away from home and out from under the preaching and other means of grace. Pay attention to what you agree to do and what your church focuses on.

This doesn’t mean don’t sacrifice at times for the church. Help serve, practice hospitality, help with Sunday School, the nursery, and conferences. But! Pay attention. We can all easily use good things sinfully. I serve in the nursery at our church. I love it and I’m thankful to help though it physically drains me. Early on, when my health made way for nursery service, I realized I was scheduled for the same time each month. Makes sense, that’s a good way to keep everyone consistent. Only problem, I was always scheduled during the Lord’s Supper. I missed 3 or 4 and started to get concerned. At the rate we were going, I might take the Lord’s Supper just a couple times a year. That’s not participating in the means of grace. I had to go talk to the lady managing the nursery schedule and ask her to rotate me. A good thing had turned into a not so good thing. Constant Vigilance. The church is our first thing, but within that context we’ve been called to keep our homes. Serve your church, but don’t use her as an excuse to avoid your homemaking responsibilities. And, remember your stages. Some stages you can help more and others less. Trust the Lord and keep going.